Corporate food catering startup Chewse raises $19 million

Chewse, a food catering and company culture startup, just announced a $19 million fundraising round as it gears up to expand its operations in the Silicon Valley area. This brings Chewse’s total funding to more than $30 million. Chewse’s investors include Foundry Group, 500 Startups and Gingerbread Capital.

Instead of plopping down meals in the office and bouncing, Chewse aims to create a full experience for its customers by offering family-style meals. In order to ensure quality, Chewse employs drivers and meal hosts so that it can provide them with training. Chewse also offers it drivers and meal hosts benefits.

“We initially started with a contractor model but then very quickly started to realize our customers often mentioned the host or the driver in their feedback,” Chewse CEO and co-founder Tracy Lawrence told TechCrunch.

“I know there’s a lot of other companies that are like food tech or logistics but for us, it’s all about elevating and improving company culture,” Lawrence said. “We have technology but we’re investing in it to create an exceptional real-life experience.”

LetVidimaze - Walk Your Visitors Through Your Page Using Videos That Play On Each Section Of Your Webpage!

“On the tech side, we’re using a ton of machine learning and algorithms to learn what people like to eat and create custom meal schedules,” Lawrence said.

To date, Chewse has hundreds of customers across three markets. Chewse initially launched in Los Angeles, but paused operations for a little over one year in order to focus on achieving market profitability in San Francisco. Chewse has since relaunched in Los Angeles, in addition to launching in cities like Palo Alto and San Jose. As part of the Silicon Valley launch, Chewse has partnered with restaurants like Smoking Pig, HOM Korean Kitchen and Oren’s Hummus Shop.

Within the next year, the goal is to double the number of markets where Chewse operates. But Chewse faces tough competition in the corporate meal catering space.

Earlier this year, Square acquired Zesty to become part of its food delivery service, Caviar. The aim of the acquisition was to strengthen Caviar’s corporate food ordering business, Caviar for Teams.

At the time, Zesty counted about 150 restaurant customers in San Francisco, which is the only city in which it operates. Some of Zesty’s customers include Snap, Splunk and TechCrunch. Zesty, which first launched in 2013 under a different name, had previously raised $20.7 million in venture funding.

“Zesty is a direct competitor of ours for sure,” Lawrence said. “When we’re thinking about the things that set us apart from Zesty and ZeroCater, the investment in using the technology and building a meal algorithm — which is something we know they’re doing by hand — and then automatically calibrate when we’re getting feedback because we employ our hosts and our drivers. Yes, it’s more expensive for us but because it provides such a superior experience, we retain our customer longer.”

Recommended For You

LIVEreel Ace is a cloud based software that let you go live using a pre-recorded video on multiple social networks at once. Advance comes packed with additional features to make it much more easier to do live videos.

Recommended

Get the developer rights to WP Mobiflux and legally implement WP Mobiflux on your client’s side. Just tell them that what all they can do with WP Mobiflux and how they can get sales and leads.Then, just install it on their site and charge them a setup

Video Chief GS AgencyProfit $500 - $1,000 Per Video By Leveraging One of The Largest Library of Pre-Made Videos, Script Templates, VoiceOver Templates And More…Instantly Access Over 1200 High-Converting Templates Spread Across More Than A Dozen Of The Hottest Niches!

TweetPush Agency EliteOnce you become a Tweetpush Agency Seller we give you an Agency license. You can then sell TweetPush with Elite or Pro level access to your leads.Your customers will get full access to TweetPush but you will have full control.You can create new customer

2 Shares In The MTC CoopStart Getting Easy Traffic To Your Online Offers On 100% Autopilot In As Little As 3 Minutes, Guaranteed!

Kickstart Social - Biz Kickstart CourseThe Biz Kickstart Course helps you to deploy your business efficiently. Now, donand#39;t get me wrong these are not the basic training that you might expect. This is next level - step-by-step training to kickstart your business and take it to new heights.

===

Recommended

Shot Messenger OTO3 [Reseller Starter]MAKE $5000- $10,000 Using Shot Messenger
In The Next One Week Even Without Making Single Fb Messenger Campaign..Re-Sell Shot Messenger Accounts As Our Official RESELLER/DEVELOPER License Holder

Speed Up WP Site PluginDramatically Improve Your Sites’ Search Engine Ranking, User Experience, Quality Score, And Marketing Conversion, All at The Same Time, and in Just One 1 Minute Guaranteed!

LeadPrimo EnterpriseWorld’s ONLY All-In-One Email Marketing Platform That Creates Beautiful Lead Pages and Send UNLIMITED Emails Directly into Inbox to Get You More Clicks and Open Rates Without Paying Any Monthly Fees FOREVER.

Designa Suite [Monthly License]Designa is a cloud based Do-It-Yourself design software by marketers for marketers. Designa is built for pumping out high converting designs including Logos, Banners, Fliers, Infographics, Memes, Posters, Tshirt designs, Mugs, etc on all platforms.

Social Meme KitSocial Meme Kit is a collection of assets and a course on how to make premium engaging memes with Easy Video Lab, Easy Video Lab Lite or any application that works with PNG and MP4 assets. Social Meme Kit includes over 400 creatively themed meme frames, 2

A Simple Tool to Help You Trade BitcoinLearn how to trade Cryptocurrency the right way! We have a team dedicated to helping you trading this market. This Bitcoin Signal Indicator is packed with many unique features!

Chrome ResellerThe pro version of software unlocks many features and additional customisation options

Mobiflux Pro MonthlyMobiflux is the first ever Wordpress plugin that lets you capture and multiply your mobile traffic. It’s twin action system gives you the ultimate in traffic and lead generation no matter what you are marketing online.With Mobiflux PRO you can implement

Content Marketing Revolution DownsellGenerate more income With "Content Marketing Revolution Accelerator Pack" In Just A Few Hours From Now. Get This Video Training Package with Full Private Label Rights !!

HQWebinar Premium with Unlimited Option (Commercial)Pro: First Ever Stimulated Automated Webinar System built with
Same Technology Used in Blockchain, Slack and FB Messenger
Run Ultra High Quality Smooth Webinars
Without Any Glitch, Delay or Lag Using
World’s Strongest Peer to Peer Technology
Run Automated

Cloud Defender v2 ProComplete Cloud Site Security for you and your clients!Cloud Defender is my tested and proven system for setting up the ultimate in server security, creating a virtual 'cloud' based fence that will protect your site from Bad Bot Traffic, Site Scrapers, D

Viral reach Reseller 120When you sign up as a reseller for Viral Reach we give you everything you need to sell it. You don’t have to bring anything except your marketing skills.Use our Sales Page, Sales Video, Everything is on our hosting. We also support your customers. If th

TweetPush Elite One TimeTweetpush lets you reply, retweet and engage with all your twitter account followers from one interface on automation. Tweetpush can get you marketing intelligence data and find you qualified leads by monitoring specialized keywords, hashtags for new twee

Memester Ace YearlyMemester Ace can support 12 Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups support is not available in the elite version.You also get the capability to work with higher caps.The Memester Ace Version can integrate with 25 Facebook Pages, 8 Facebook Profiles, 10 Twitt

Viral Reach : Credi Response ProCredi Response is a web based SAAS product that is 100% compatible with Facebook terms if service. It replies to each and every comment with a notification graphic and sound on your Facebook fan page automatically..Reach out to followers in their inbox,

WP Leads Machine GoldCapture leads from wordpress sites using PDF version of the blog post as a lead magnet

TigerPress Previous Volumes Second Chance 8Premium one of a kind wordpress themes that do all the onpage seo for you including image seo, with TigerPress themes you can also generate an unlimited amount of geo targeted landing pages in any language.

Face To Face Animated Character Creation KitAdd Face To Face animations to static images and clipart to make them come alive. Create unlimited unique characters and mascots that "talk" to your viewers. Forget about boring static images. Spice up your video projects with Face To Face animations. It'

OnPoint CommunityOnPoint Community will give the user access to a new niche each month, plus extra footage, animations and music. And the community will be able to vote for this each month and shape how this package grows over time

SociAutomate Agency LiteHarness The Power of Social Media Automation To Get MORE Leads, Sales and Buyers on Complete Autopilot With SociAutomate!

TigerPress Volume 4 Theme ClubGet all Tigerpress themes added each month, including the HTML versions and white label functionality, members also receive FREE updates and support, and also receive access to SaaS bonuses added monthly for one low price.

Viral Reach ACEViral Reach Ace supports up to 40 projects, max out your opportunities to make profits. Run and manage multiple Facebook pages as the Ace upgrade gives you the capacity to automate content for 50 Facebook pages on 100% automation.The Ace upgrade also ge

Playtraffic Pro MonthlyThe Play traffic Pro version comes with a host of advantages which will make your Playlist marketing even more beneficial. Get 100% playlist automation, set up once and publish forever. It also goes a step further and lets you easily modify existing playl